


and though they are beautiful

by cordsycords



Series: and so we are slaves to the worst of our insecurities [1]
Category: L.A. By Night (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I don't know, I would say you can blame this on the fact that i am quite tired and i have an exam tomorrow, Introspection, Minor Body Horror? maybe?, Pining, Tremere Shit Man, Whump, and then somehow became plant-based body horror?, but im also just Like This Sometimes, it start out as pining-induced hanahaki, kind of?, this fic went weird places tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22674850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordsycords/pseuds/cordsycords
Summary: Right after the season three epilogues, Eva and Jasper decide to take a short break in their relationship. It goes about as well as you think it might.At first, he attributes the burgeoning pain in his chest to his still-healing wounds, but the ache persists.And then something gets stuck in his throat.
Relationships: Eva/Jasper Heartwood
Series: and so we are slaves to the worst of our insecurities [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638919
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	and though they are beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> This is... this is a weird fic. I'm just gonna come out and say it. This went a completely different direction from my original idea, and it got completely out of hand. It's weird.
> 
> Edit 05/04/2020: This fic now has cover art by the lovely PuzzleDragon. Go check them out on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuzzleDragon) and [Tumblr](https://puzzle-dragon.tumblr.com).

[](https://puzzle-dragon.tumblr.com/post/617146184343158784/the-cordsycords-collection-we-can-just-kiss-like)

_**i. you made flowers** _

Three nights after their talk at the observatory, she ends things with a simple text:

_I think I need some time._

Though in his mind he knows it is not the end, it still feels as such. There are still parts of himself that are so unsure when it comes to her. There are still dark voices that whisper cruel things in his ear, remind him of his deformities and the things that make him truly monstrous when compared to her. He has seen her change so much since they had first met, the infection of his anger and hatred passing through her in small doses, but transforming her all the same. The text comes and he knows that it is not the end, but thinks that it should be.

_How much time?_

_Not too long. I’ll let you know._

There is an urge to throw his phone across the room, but it is brief. He is not angry at her, no, but perhaps he is angry at himself. He accepts the statement neatly, without complaint, without question, without a desperate bargaining plea. Does he so easily believe that he does not deserve her, that he would let her go so quickly? Or has he already resigned himself to his fate, so assured that the punishment of his sins is this immortal loneliness he clings to so well?

He tucks the phone into a drawer, uncaring if the rest of the coterie attempt to contact him in the near future. With a sigh, he looks around his haven, at the open books left on the coffee table, and the soft fleece blanket that was thrown over the back of the armchair, little pieces of her that she had left behind. He doesn’t hesitate to put the books back where they belong, and to fold the blanket up, hiding it somewhere discrete and out of the way.

Over the course of the first evening, a quiet ache settles in his chest, right by the mottled scar tissue of his heart. It’s a dull pain that he attributes to his still-healing body, worrying the palm of his hand over the tight skin to try to rub the pain away. 

And yet the ache persists.

The next evening he wakes alone, body bereft of anything to cling to in a bed too small to harbour the isolation he still feels. He risks hunger to push his Vitae to the spot where a hole had pierced through his skin mere nights ago, and he feels the eerie crawl of his skin wiping away the scars, muscle tissue knitting back together, cracked bones healing in mere seconds compared to agonizing months. Healing such extensive damage is an ordeal, even for a Kindred, but he pushes back against the instinct of hunger, settling the Beast within down to a quiet grumble at the back of his mind.

Walking out into the living area of his haven, he’s almost surprised to see it so bare, the personal touches of life hidden away the previous night. Sitting down on the couch, he is hyperaware of the silence that permeates this place and wonders at what point he had begun to find it more disquieting than familiar. When had he begun to look for someone else, to _expect_ that there be another here, one who was here due to their own free will, at least?

Her ring still sits on the pinky finger of his right hand, too small to fit on any of the others. The metal is cold as plays with it, twisting it around his finger, threatening to remove it but refusing to let it go. In the end, he settles it back to where it sat before, just below the knuckle, slightly digging into his skin.

He has no time for this, he reminds himself. The incursion of the Camarilla into his haven just over a week ago left plans to mutate in his head, ideas for traps and obstacles to put into place to prevent anyone from so easily returning. There is something within him that doubts anything he could do would do anything to stop Strauss from doing whatever the fuck he wanted, but at least he could make himself feel better, set his mind at ease if only for a little while.

Compared to the others, he’s been in the labyrinth enough times that he finds a macabre kind of comfort walking through its confusing passages. He keeps one hand attached to its cold stone walls, grounding himself in it’s twisting geometry. He knows it well now, the lefts that turn into rights that lead down hallways that look small enough to force him to crouch down but then turn out to be larger than he imagined. He has no sense of a concrete destination but isn’t surprised when he somehow makes his way back to the room where the mirror’s shattered pieces still lie scattered on the ground. 

Since time works weirdly down in the labyrinth, he doesn’t know how longs it’s been, but he’s noticed the ache in his chest has grown. What was once a targeted pain has now spread. His lungs hurt, and he’s sure that if he had to breathe it would be a struggle to do so. Getting down on his knees, he curls his body over as he begins to pick up the splintered pieces of wood, placing each one into his backpack to be carried back to his haven.

At first, it had been easy to ignore, but the activity pulls at the ache more than before, and he has to stop himself a couple of times to suppress it. If it was only a few days earlier, he wouldn’t be as worried, with his previous injuries as extensive as they were, but he had healed. So how was he getting worse in such short a time?

With an extra groan, he hoists his backpack back over his shoulders, the straps digging into his skin, irritating the ache even further. It takes himself longer than usual to return to his haven, and when he finally does he doesn’t hesitate to throw off his backpack and curl into a ball on his bed, wishing the ache to go away.

_**ii. grow in my lungs** _

There is something stuck in his throat.

For a thing that does not need to breathe, it should not matter to him, but it does. Because he can _feel_ something that’s stuck there, like an errant piece of food, or a confession that’s gone unsaid. It doesn’t hurt, per se, not like the ache in his chest that’s grown so burdensome that he’s just decided to deal with it for now. Rousing his blood into mending the muscles has done nothing to quell it, and he’s becoming increasingly worried about his growing hunger.

No, the thing stuck in his throat does not hurt him, but it is damn irritating.

He finds himself trying to reflexively swallow it down, stubbornly hoping that if he just keeps it at that it will eventually go away. Some cynical part of him, which is certainly the part that screams the loudest, however, knows that it won’t. His unlife has been marked with pain and irritation since the moment he was Turned, why would anything decide to change now?

Of course, he reminds himself, that hasn’t always been true. The recent nights have been uncharacteristically kind to him in fact, if one discounts the whole Hollywood sign fiasco. That cynical part of him, while continuing to be very loud, was occasionally dampened by the odd spurt of happiness.

And where had that come from, he asks himself.

He sighs, glancing over his personal project placed before him on the floor. He had decided to try and figure out how the errant pieces of the mirror’s frame fit together, arranging the pieces into a giant impossible puzzle beneath him. The work was monotonous and time-consuming, and altogether boring enough that it kept his mind focused for most of the night, but it seems even menial work wasn’t enough to stop his thoughts from drifting to her.

It’s not hard to admit he feels lighter in her presence, more at ease around her than he’s been in years, like every point of tension in his body can finally relax when she’s near. His hand returns to her ring on his finger. It’s warmer than usual, he thinks as he twists it, and suddenly he is reminded of the time she gave it to him. She had left then, too, the first time when she needed time to herself. The ring had been in pieces the first time he held it, and it took several nights for him to fit it together properly, and then another couple more for him to read and translate the Cyrillic writing etched within it. He did not understand the meaning of those words at the time, but he remembered them instilling the faintest bit of hope that she would eventually return.

He wants to talk to her. He wants to see her. He wants to bundle her up in his haven and never let her go. Never before did he believe that separation from a person would become so difficult, that it would lead him to _this_ , performing meaningless tasks that amounted to nothing just to stop himself from thinking of her. They had been so attached after he had awoken from Torpor, unable to separate themselves from the other in the wake of such a harrowing event. She clung to him that first night, both of them overwhelmed with the evening’s proceedings, his body still bent and broken. And even though her nails dug into her skin, even though she held so tight that he felt less than comfortable, he still let her hold on lest she feel herself float away.

He remembers her arm clutching his, their legs entangled together, the faintest touch of her finger tracing the black veins along the bare skin of his arm. Not a word passed between them, for there was nothing they could say--

There is something stuck in his throat.

He swallows once more, but the feeling grates on him, and a snarl erupts from the back of his throat. He can feel whatever it is within him, a knot of something moving in the vibrations of each sound he makes. He tries to cough it out, but his damn lungs won’t respond to him like they used to, so in a fit of impatient desperation he wills his heart to beat once more.

The first breath is always the worst, and in his haste, he didn’t think about what he was doing. He gasps violently, whatever it is that is stuck in his throat lodging further downwards and within seconds he is choking on it. He collapses to the ground as his lungs try to inhale even a tiny bit of oxygen, his restarted heart quickly working into a panic within his chest, each beat followed by a new stab of pain that reverberates through him. Logically, he knows that he can’t die from this, he’s already dead, but there is nothing about this that can be logical. His body believes it needs to breathe again, so it will continue to hold on until it finally again, or until the effect finally wears off in about an hour.

Until then, the two opposing natures of undead self and living instincts will keep him in this terrible state without reprieve, unable to pass out from the lack of air he doesn’t actually need. His lungs are already burning, and the dizziness that washes over him forces him onto the floor, curling onto his side as he continues to heave.

It is not the worst pain he has felt, especially in recent memory. It’s nothing to compare to a stake to the heart, or the burn of the sun, or the wracking torture of transformation that was his Embrace which might have been so long ago, but still sticks in his mind. While this might last only for an hour, that had been nights of his bones twisting against each other, moulding a new monstrous form for him to inhabit.

With one aching gasp, he is able to get enough air in his sore lungs to force out a cough. And then another. And a third. His coughing fit continues until he feels whatever is stuck in his throat suddenly dislodge, and he is able to bring himself to his hands in knees, coughing it onto the floor beneath him. He sits back on his knees, wiping the bloody tears he hadn’t realized he shed away with the back of his hand. Once his heart is beating at a normal tempo, and his lungs can finally take care of themselves without having to think about it, he stares at what he had coughed up.

A dozen or so red petals, scattered across the floor.

_**iii. and though they are beautiful** _

The petals continue. He wakes up in the early evening to see them dotting his pillow, and sometimes they’re even sitting in his mouth, somehow making their way there during his day-sleep, tasting like ashes against his tongue. They don’t seem to last long whenever they’re separated from him, decomposing into nothing in less than an hour. He timed it, once, watching as the beautiful petals slowly broke down and disappeared in front of his eyes.

He’s careful not to use the Blush of Life again, worried about his ever-increasing hunger, as well as trying to prevent going through the ordeal of the previous night again. He’s learned to deal with the build of the petals in his throat throughout the night, just so that they’ll fall out during the day. With each night that passes, however, he wakes up to find more of them in his bed, some even falling to the floor in a pile beneath it.

Just like with any puzzle he’s been presented with before, he begins to research. Within one night, almost a dozen books are spread out around his haven, each open to a different page, and then bookmarked at several more as he cross-references things from one book to another, and then uses a couple of others to translate, and even more to remind him of things he doesn’t remember. Looking around before he goes to sleep, his haven is in complete disarray, tomes and notebooks strewn across the room, the shattered pieces of the mirror still in a jigsaw puzzle on the floor.

His arm itches.

There are more petals on the floor of his bedroom the next day, and he returns to his research.

Going through his library, he finds remnants of her in the pages of his books. There are things she has left behind: small scraps of paper with hastily scribbled notes with chicken-scratch writing that seems so contrary to her elegant nature, hand-made bookmarks of dried flowers pressed between sheets of wax paper, and even the occasional whiff of her scent from a tome she particularly enjoyed.

She never researched as he did. Sure, if there was knowledge she was missing she could read and read until she finally found it, but never with the same manic energy that he had. For her, it was the journey, not the answer itself, that she cared about, reading and understanding every word that she could until she found the right ones, consuming all the other ones along the way. She read quickly because she could, not because she was agonizingly waiting to get to the next page or toss the book entirely. He could be in a spiral of madness, pulling books off shelves left and right, muttering to himself as he paced the floor trying to keep all the information in his head straight. And she’d just sit in her armchair, lazily reading to her dead heart’s content, a small smile amusement in her face, the fleece blanket thrown across her knees.

He should call her. He knows he should call her. If she knew what was happening, she would chastise him for _not_ calling her. He digs his phone out from the drawer he put it in, but she hasn’t texted him back yet. She hasn’t told him she’s ready to see him again.

He pulls the blanket out too, wraps it around his shoulders even though he doesn’t feel the cold. The blanket tickles his skin. He scratches his arm. He falls asleep on his couch, surrounded by the scent of dried flowers and iron.

He wakes up to petal in his mouth again, flowers falling down his chest and down onto the floor. He groans, moving to shake them off. The blanket snags on something, sticking to his arm. He pauses, looking over to it.

With still fingers, he gingerly detaches the blanket from his skin, tugging the fabric carefully from the set of sharp thorns that poke out of the skin of his right arm. They start just above his wrist, unevenly spaced as they travel up his arm and under the hem of his t-shirt, poking through the fabric where they sit on his shoulder. Blood trickles from the holes in his skin, and he quickly wills them closed, thankful that the Beast remains quiet at the moment.

He brings up a finger, pressing it against one of the thorns on his wrist, wincing when it breaks through his skin without too much pressure.

Blood wells up on the finger. He brings it up to his mouth, sucking away at the bitter taste as he glares at the thorns in his skin.

_**iv. i can’t--** _

He examines the thorns each night, noticing how they progress during his day sleep until they’re no longer thorns, but vines creeping up and down his arm. They’re thin but strong, each strand with its own set of thorns that dig back into his skin.

There is a single mirror in his haven, tucked away somewhere anyone is unlikely to find, and he is unlikely to remember, but he pulls it out. He’s taken to sleeping without a shirt on, the thorns ruining more shirts than he’d care to admit, and each night when he awakes he stands in front of the mirror, admiring the vines progress throughout the day.

For all the pain they cause him, they are quite beautiful; delicate green covering the harsh black veins on his pale skin, following them with a mind of their own. He can’t help but stare, trailing a finger along, starting at the tip of his pinkie finger, across the warm copper of the ring, up his arm to where the strands desperately reach across his collarbone to his heart.

She used to follow the same path, when they were in his bed, the humanity of sweat and bruises and scratches still covering their skin, coming down from their respective highs that neither of them had felt in such a long time. She hummed a mindless tune under her breath, trailing her finger across his skin. It left shivers in its wake, ripples across his skin that left him feeling numb and slightly giddy. He couldn’t look her in the eye, he remembers, staring at the ceiling, trying to get himself out of his own head until she pulled his face toward hers, bringing their lips together with quiet comfort.

She never described her affections for him in terms of his physical appearance, which he is truly grateful for. He is monstrous. There is nothing she, or anyone, could say that could convince him otherwise, so it is best that it is left unsaid. It is better that he knows she feels comfortable in his presence, that she finds a kindred spirit within him. He does not care if she actually finds him attractive or not, he is happy to be the ugly thing in the wake of her own beauty.

The vines grow strong, and he lets them. Each night, instead of willing his new wounds closed, he lets them fester, wiping the trickling blood away throughout the evening. The vines thicken, tightening around his skin as the older ones turn a deeper brown. He can’t move his hand anymore, can barely twitch his fingers by the time the vines have crept over his heart and up his neck, it’s newest shoots tickling up his chin.

She loves flowers, knows the language of them, communicates using them with wry smiles and hidden intentions until he can finally decode what they mean, her face lighting up in pure joy when he does.

She loves flowers.

He thinks she loves him.

He stands in front of the mirror for an entire evening, petals dropping from his mouth onto the floor, blood dripping freely down his bare skin.

He has grown beautifully for her.

_**v. fucking--** _

When it rains, it pours.

He awakens the next night on the floor of his haven to the sound of it pounding overhead, and against all logical thought, he has the sudden unsatiable urge to go outside. He pulls an old, loose hoodie out from his closet, forgoing a t-shirt but zipping it up to his neck, and under the cover of obfuscation goes out into the rain.

Thunder and lightning crash together in the clouds above him. Looking west, he can see the observatory overlooking Hollywood, its domed roof reflecting the light of the lightning back into the sky. Without hesitation, he walks towards it. He’s soaked in mere seconds, but he barely feels the cold. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, his thumb brushing the heated edge of her ring.

She loves the rain, too. She loves the scent of it as she waits for its arrival, loves standing out as it drenches her clothes hair, rivulets of water travelling down her skin, loves the puddles that it leaves behind, ones she secretly jumps in when no one is looking. He would join her, begrudgingly at first, he doesn’t enjoy the sensation of getting soaked to the bone. But to see her out there, the lightest she’s ever been. That was enough to hold back his complaining, to cease his cynical nature and just allow her to enjoy herself if only for a little while.

Once he makes it to Griffith Park, he knows where he’s going. He knows the paths she takes, has them memorized by now after following her through her nightly routine. There’s a clearing, somewhere, that she likes to go to, secretive and out of the way, perfect for standing alone in the rain.

He does find her there, standing in the clearing. Her arms are spread, head pointing up to the sky, the long sleeves of her dress flapping in the wind. He does not reveal himself to her, she still needs her space, but he can watch, at least, he can be near her.

Lightning flashes and the boom of thunder follows afterward. He reflexively counts the beats between the two under his breath, unable to remove his gaze from her eerily still form. When the next flash comes, she moves. His glare is affixed to her has electricity suddenly bursts around her body and she thrusts her hands upwards to the sky, letting it travel in an arc towards it. It joins in with the storm around it, hiding its magic in plain sight.

He stiffens where he stands, unable to move as she continues to shoot lightning into the sky, still in as much awe of her as he was the first time he saw it. The smell of burnt ozone permeates the air, and some buried instinct of his tells him that he should be scared, but he’s not. He can’t be scared of her.

She continues to throw lightning into the sky, faster and faster, timed with the storm around her, until she collapses to the ground in exhaustion, the thunder hiding the sound of her cries as shivers wrack her body. He takes a step towards her but stops himself.

A petal drops from his mouth. He leaves it behind. 

When he returns to his haven, he hangs up the sweater to dry, once again standing in front of the mirror to look at the vines.

Bright green buds scatter up and down the brown thorny strands. A small leaf grows from the tip of his pinkie finger.

_**vi. breathe** _

Somewhere in his haven, his phone is vibrating. He can hear it, the short rumble of a text, followed by the annoying patter of someone calling him. He can hear it, but he can’t move to find it.

The thorns of the vines over his heart pierce through the skin, and though it is not the same as a wooden stake, it is enough. He’s not completely immobile, he can still move some parts of his body well enough, but not in sync, not in a way that represents any type of mobility.

Overnight, the vines had grown up to his mouth, pushing their way past his lips and down his throat. He can feel the thorns piercing through the skin of his cheeks, can taste his own bitter blood trickling down the back of his throat. There are petals on his chest, falling freely out of his mouth now. He’s hungry, dangerously so, the satiating presence of the labyrinth doing nothing to prevent it after freely bleeding for almost a week.

His left arm is free enough that he can almost push himself up to a sitting position, each movement a struggle. The thorns in his heart pierce even harder, and it shoots through his body. He groans, tiredly looking down at himself.

The buds on his right arm are gone, replaced with five or six blooming red roses. Her ring is scorching hot against his skin.

_My Crimson Petal_

He forces a laugh through his body. It hurts. Everything hurts.

His phone continues to vibrate.

The day-sleep takes him.

The next night, his phone does not vibrate. He can not move. There is a new rose growing on the inside of his cheek, pressing against his tongue.

In the back of his mind, he hears the door to his haven open.

“Jasper?” Eva calls out.

There is enough in him to vaguely groan a reply, but he can’t really speak past the flower in his mouth. He can hear her footsteps, though, running through the halls of his haven, growing louder as she moves closer to him. When she appears in the door to his bedroom, she’s carrying a black duffel bag across her shoulder. He meets her eyes across the room.

She rushes to him, “Jasper!” Her hands immediately go to him, gently reaching out to hold his head. She flinches back, hissing in pain as the thorns pierce her skin, and she looks at them before turning her gaze to his.

Seeing her like this is clarity, and the fear he sees in her eyes suddenly wells within him. It takes everything he has, but he can still move his left arm, reaching out toward her startled face to tap his fingers against her cheek in an attempt at comfort. He brings his hand back towards him, weaving his fingers through the vines above his heart, trying to pull them away. The thorns let up enough that he can get a proper groan out, blood pouring out of the holes the thorns had left behind as well as the new wounds they made in his left hand.

“Wait, wait, wait.” She startles, hands going out to stop him. The thorns embed themselves back into his skin, and the numb immobility settles in once more, “Just, wait. I-- I can do it. Just-- are you hungry?”

He moans, nodding his head as much as he can.

“Okay,” she drops the bag to the floor, kneeling down to go digging through it and returning moments later with a large blood pack in her hands, “Here. It’s-- well it’s drugged. But, Jasper, please, you need it. I think-- I think this will hurt.”

She looks so scared, clutching the blood in her grasp. He nods again.

She gets to work quickly.

When he is finally conscious again, she is in his arms, wrapped in a sweater that he quickly recognizes as his current flavour of black hoodie, her hand splayed out on his bare chest over the mottled black scar that marks his heart.

“I’m staying here for a while,” she states, quickly realizing that he is awake.

“Okay.”

“Mostly so you don’t--,” she pauses, choosing her next words carefully, “It was the ring. Strauss cursed the ring.”

“Huh.” In retrospect, it’s stupidly obvious.

“It was stuck. I had to cut your finger--”

He quickly raises his hand. The ring is gone, but his pinkie finger is still there, and it seems to be the right length. It must have grown back, “Where is it? The ring, not the finger.”

“It’s with the Weird Sisters, now.”

“Oh. Good. That’s-- they’re good.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“You needed space,” he says, stating the obvious. Saying it out loud, it truly is a pitiful excuse.

She sighs in the way she does when he’s done something stupid and she doesn’t approve. It’s endlessly endearing, “Jasper, for all the books you read, you can be incredibly-- _frustratingly_ \--”

“Stupid?” he interrupts.

She sighs again. It’s still endearing, “Dense.”

He chuckles, bringing her closer in his arms. For the first time in weeks, nothing hurts, “I love you too.”

She jolts in his grasp, suddenly tensing up within his embrace.

“Say it again,” she whispers.

“I love you.”

She relaxes. She doesn’t say it back.

But damn.

It still feels good.


End file.
